“He heard from industry leaders who employ thousands of hard-working families in the mining sector,” Jefferies added, noting Ford also travelled to Washington, D.C. last month to meet with “key political and business leaders” including governors of states that are among Ontario’s largest trading partners.
“While the NDP believe that everything begins and ends in downtown Toronto, Premier Doug Ford knows you have to go out and hear from real Ontario families,” Jefferies said.
It is not unusual for handlers to keep premiers or ministers of any political stripe out of question period on occasion when hot-button issues flare. In 2012, then-Liberal premier Dalton McGuinty took the rare step of proroguing the minority legislature and announcing his resignation during a furor over the gas-plants scandal and threats of wage freezes for public-sector workers.
Fife said Ford has been a “no-show” too often at a time when concerns were being raised about the independence of the OPP with a friend of the premier in charge and about the government’s new autism program, which has come under fierce criticism from parents of autistic children.
“The premier of the provinces should be able to visit business and show up to question period and do his job.”
Ford also skipped question period in the week before Christmas after the government called MPPs back to pass legislation to prevent a possible strike by workers at Ontario Power Generation. Jefferies said that was because the premier had meetings and events planned because the legislature had been scheduled to be on Christmas break.
That was the week following a decision by Taverner to put his OPP appointment
on hold pending the outcome of the integrity commissioner’s investigation.
Fife’s complaint echoes the
attention Ford garnered as a mayoral candidate in 2014 for having the third-worst attendance as a Toronto city councillor that year, in which he missed 53 per cent of the votes on municipal issues.
As well, in his four years as councillor for Ward 2 (Etobicoke North), Ford was absent for 30 per cent of the 7,813 total votes during the term his late brother, Rob Ford, was mayor.
During that time, Ford was serving as councillor, president of the family company Deco Labels and Tags, and campaign manager for his brother, who exited the race because of cancer. Following that, Ford picked up his brother’s mantle and ran unsuccessfully for mayor.
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